EMERGENYC
About the Faculty
Lead Faculty, George Emilio Sánchez
George Emilio Sánchez is the Chairperson of the Department of Performing and Creative Arts at the College of Staten Island (CUNY). He teaches undergraduate courses in the Drama program and graduate courses for the Education Department. He has directed five original student productions for the PCA and continues to work with students and classes with the goal of creating original theater/performance works. He continues to work as a teaching artist outside of the college demonstrating how the arts can be utilized in education across disciplines. Most recently he was the resident teaching artist for the Bronx Museum of the Arts for their Action Lab Theater. In this capacity he worked with teachers and artists teaching them Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed techniques. As a result of his work in education he was the recipient of the Brooklyn Arts Exchange 2006 Arts Educator Award. His most recent performance work with collaborator Patricia Hoffbauer, The Architecture of Seeing-REMIX, was presented at La MaMa in 2006. In 2004 they premiered Milagro at Dance Theater Workshop. A year earlier Hoc Est Corpus/This Is A Body premiered at Symphony Space in April 2003. His third solo performance ROSA premiered at Dixon Place in 2002. His first solo performance, Chief Half-Breed in the Land of In-Between, was commissioned and premiered at Dance Theater Workshop and was also part of Mo’ Madness curated by George C. Wolfe at The Public Theater. His second solo performance piece, LATINDIO also premiered in New York City and both pieces have since been performed in over 20 states as well as in Puerto Rico and Peru. He has collaborated with Brazilian choreographer Patricia Hoffbauer on numerous pieces. Among those are A Night in La Mezcla and The Architecture of Seeing. As an artistic associate under JoAnne Akalaitis he created the Latino Lab at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater. He has garnered two New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships for Performance Art/Emergent Forms and was a Fulbright Scholar to Peru in 1994.
Invited Artists
Soomi Kim is a Korean born, New York City based actor/movement artist (dancer, stage combat/martialarts, choreographer, former gymnast). She has worked as a company member with several artists as well producing, creating and performing her own work, almost always in the collaborative setting. She has created 2 original full length productions as a lead artist (developed in collaboration with director Suzi Takahashi) and is currently developing a third (Chang(e)) as a HERE Arts Resident artist. Her pieces are: Lee/gendary (inspired by the life of Bruce Lee, winner for Outstanding Production of a Play and Takahashi for Outstanding director at the 2009 NYIT Awards), Dictee: bells fall a peal to sky (presented at the 3rd National Asian American Theater festival in LA 2011 and Women Center Stage in NYC- 2012). Chang(e) is a political theater performance piece inspired by the life of Kathy Change, a Chinese American performance artist who self immolated in front of the Peace sculpture on the campus of U Penn in 1996 as an act of protest. For 2 years straight Kim has participated in the Asian Arts Initiative’s Artist Exchange residency, where her work is presented in Philadelphia, PA. A workshop of Chang(e) was recently shown at HERE’s annual Culturemart festival of new work by current HARP artists. Soomi has been featured in KoreAm Journal, Asiance magazine, Kung Fu magazine, The Korea Times, Tsing Tao newspaper, the L.A. Times and has appeared as a guest on PBS's show Asian America, Art on Air radio station and on NYtheatre.com podcasts. www.soomikim.com
photo credit: Gil Seo
Paloma McGregor is a choreographer, writer and organizer living in Harlem. Her performance work has been presented throughout New York, including at The Kitchen, Harlem Stage, EXIT Art, SummerStages, Brecht Forum, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Dixon Place, Fordham University and Bronx Academy of Art and Dance, as well as at UCLA, U.C. Berkeley, Yale University, The Dance Place in Washington, DC, Cleveland Public Theatre and the McKenna Museum in New Orleans. She has collaborated with directors Patricia McGregor, Niegel Smith and Emily Mendelsohn, multidisciplinary artists Mendi+Keith Obadike and LaTasha Nevada Diggs and musician Greg Tate. Paloma is co-founder of Angela's Pulse, along with her director-sister, Patricia McGregor. Angela’s Pulse devises collaborative performance work; collaborates with diverse communities, including artists, activists, educators, students, seniors and scientists; and is dedicated to building community and illuminating undertold stories. Their first evening-length work, Blood Dazzler, was based on poetry by Patricia Smith and premiered in a sold-out run at Harlem Stage in 2010. Paloma is currently developing Building a Better Fishtrap, a performance project that explores water, memory and home, as well as examines what we carry with us, what we leave behind and what we reclaim. Among her awards: 2013 Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics Artist in Residence; 2013 Wave Hill Winter Workspace grant and creative residency; 2012-13 arts leadership fellowship from the Kennedy Center's DeVos Institute; 2012-13 iLAND grant and creative residency; 2012 Jerome Foundation Travel Grant; 2011 Earthdance E|Merge creative residency; 2010 QuAD creative residency; 2010 Harlem Stage Fund for New Work; 2009 Voice & Vision creative residency. Paloma toured internationally as a dancer with Urban Bush Women for six years, and she continues to perform. In 2010-11, she was in the award-winning cast of Liz Lerman’s The Matter of Origins and is currently a collaborator on Cassie Meador’s How to Lose a Mountain and Jill Sigman’s Last Days / First Field, both of which will premiere in Spring 2013.
Susana Cook
Susana Cook, born in Argentina, is a New York based playwright, director and performer who has been producing original work for over 20 years. Her work has been presented in numerous performance spaces in New York City, including Dixon Place, PS. 122, W.O.W Cafe Theater, Ubu Rep, Theater for the New City, The Puffin Room and The Kitchen. She has also performed internationally in Spain, France, India, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Canada and at several colleges and universities around the country. Some of her latest shows are include : Homeland Insecurities, The idiot King, The Values Horror Show, 100 Years of Attitude, Dykenstein, Hamletango, Prince of Butches, Gross National Product, Hot Tamale, Conga Guerrilla Forest, The Fraud, Butch Fashion Show in the Femme Auto Body Shop, Rats and Tango Lesbiango She is the recipient of several fellowships and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Arts International, Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, The Franklin Furnace Archives, The Puffin Foundation and INTAR. www.susanacook.com
Fulana
Fulana is a video collective in that emerged as the vision-fusion of four New York-based Latina artists joined by a love of video and performance, a critical gaze, a bilingual sense of humor and —most of all— a shared desire to create art within a collaborative onda. So we put our Spanglish brains together, drank some coffee, and founded Fulana in 2000. Through parody and satire, we explore themes that are relevant to Latino cultures in the U.S., delving into the nuances that bind our experiences, experimenting with strategies to make visible what we're so often made to read between the lines. Our work, whose aesthetic ranges from cable-access kitsch to Telemundo tinsel, consists mainly of mock television commercials, music videos and print advertisements. Focusing on popular culture, we respond to the ways ideologies and identities are marketed to us, sold to us—and how we sell ourselves—through the mass media. www.fulana.org
Peggy Shaw
Peggy Shaw is an independent performance artist, painter and poet who believes in new images, and rejects old ideas. She challenges established practices in theatre, prisons, gender, relationships and humor. Her work is firmly rooted in a queer feminist perspective, with an unceasing quest for global equality in writing, spoken word and performance.
Ebony Noelle Golden
Houston, TX native, Ebony Noelle Golden, is a public scholar, performance artist and director of Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative. She also serves as the artistic director of Body Ecology Performance Ensemble. BDAC specializes in creative workshops, curriculum development, cultural and performance art design for progressive social change. Working nation-wide, her work spans creative, academic and community organizing spheres. Ebony believes that liberation is a precarious and awesomely terrifying pursuit; yet she is wholly dedicated to activating art, culture and education for liberation and transformation of individuals and communities. Golden’s approach to community arts and cultural design is steeped in the practices of black women, activism, experimental performance and secular/spirituality that honors and affirms individuals and communities working to be self-actualized, self-determined, creative and liberated. Recognized as a Woman Warrior by Casa Atabex Ache and a Black Girl Geek in Arts & Culture by Lived Unchained, Ebony’s work has been supported by a variety of organizations including: New York University, Alternate Roots, We Shall Overcome Fund, Fund for Southern Communities, Soul Mountain Poetry Center, The Highlander Center for Research and Education, Cave Canem Foundation, North Carolina Humanities Council, State of the Nation and Atlantic Center for the Arts. Currently Golden is conjuring RingShout for Reproductive Justice (cultural arts campaign), Weaving Revolution: A Tool Kit for Cultural Organizers, Black Fantastic: New Media Exhibit, The Body Ecology: Performing Cultural Arts Direct Action (tool kit) and "again, the watercarriers”, a book of poems.
www.bettysdaughterarts.com
Patricia Hoffbauer
Pat Hoffbauer is a dance artist and educator. She teaches at Hunter College and Princeton and performs with Yvonne Rainer. Her work Para-dice (stage 1) was presented by Danspace Project as part of Platform and stage 2 is on its way!
Daniel Alexander Jones
Daniel Alexander Jones makes live art. An award-winning performer, writer and director, American Theatre Magazine named him "one of fifteen artists whose work will be transforming American stages for decades to come." His unconventional body of work includes plays (Bel Canto, Earthbirths, Phoenix Fabrik), performance pieces (Blood:Shock:Boogie, The Book of Daniel, Cab and Lena) and devised work (Qualities of Light, Clayangels). In collaboration with composer Bobby Halvorson, Daniel, as his "altar-ego" Jomama Jones (called "a true theatrical original" by Backstage Magazine), has released the CDs Lone Star and Radiate; has performed in concert at Joe's Pub and Symphony Space; and sold out a theatrical run of the critically acclaimed show Radiate, directed by Kym Moore at Soho Rep. Daniel holds a degree in Africana Studies from Vassar College and a graduate degree in Theatre from Brown University. He is Assistant Professor of Theatre at Fordham University and previously taught in the MFA programs at the University of Texas at Austin and Goddard College. Daniel is a Creative Capital grantee, a MAP Fund grantee, and a Howard Foundation Fellowship recipient. He is an alumnus of New Dramatists, a Core Member of the Playwrights' Center, a national company member of Pillsbury House Theatre and a newly appointed Fellow at the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women & Gender in the Arts & Media at Columbia College, Chicago. Daniel Alexander Jones received the prestigious Alpert Award in the Arts for Theatre in 2006 in recognition of his body of work.
danielalexanderjones.typepad.com/about.html
Ed Woodham
Ed Woodham is the Founder and Director of Art in Odd Places (AiOP), which presents visual and performance art in unexpected public spaces. AiOP also produces an annual festival along 14th Street in Manhattan, NYC from Avenue C to the Hudson River each October. Art in Odd Places aims to stretch the boundaries of communication in the public realm by presenting artworks in all disciplines outside the confines of traditional public space regulations. AiOP reminds us that public spaces function as the epicenter for diverse social interactions and the unfettered exchange of ideas. Art in Odd Places (AiOP) began as an action by a group of artists led by Ed Woodham to encourage local participation in the Cultural Olympiad of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. In 2005, after moving back to New York City, he re imagined it as a response to the dwindling of public space and personal civil liberties - first in the Lower East Side and East Village, and since 2008, on 14th Street in Manhattan. AiOP has always been a grassroots project fueled by the goodwill and inventiveness of its participants. www.artinoddplaces.org
Aisha Jordan and Frantz Jerome (2050 Legacy)
2050 Legacy is a hip-hop and social justice theater group devoted to continuing the great work of the New WORLD Theater's Project 2050 in empowering artists and strengthening communities through animating democracy.
Aisha Jordan is a performer and arts organizer currently working with the group. She has performed and done work for, PS 122, EmergeNYC - Hemispheric Institute, Nuyorican Poets Café, Bowery Poetry Club, The Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, New 42nd street studios, New Victory Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center, New WORLD Theater, Lyrical Circle with the Brotherhood Sister-Sol, and the Hip-Hop Theater Festival. She has worked with numerous artists in social justice theater to develop original works for the stage, including Tim Miller, Steven Sapp and Mildred Ruiz of Universes, Rha Goddess, Reggie Cabico, Magdalena Gomez, George Emilio Sanchez, Baba Israel, and Kamillah Forbes. Aisha currently attends NYU’s intensive master’s program studying Arts and Politics at the Tisch School for the Arts and works to facilitate social change through self-exploration and the transformation and empowerment of artists and audiences, utilizing collaborative theater development and performance.
Frantz Jerome is an MC, poet, essayist, performer, educator, activist, and husband. Frantz is currently teaching modern mythology, media, technology, and empowerment with Inwood House in NYC high schools. An alumn of EMERGENYC and a lover of words, Frantz hopes to share 'the meaning of things' with everyone he comes in contact with.
Yes Lab
The Yes Lab is a series of brainstorms and trainings to help activist groups carry out media-garnering creative actions, focused on their own campaign goals. It's a way for social justice organizations to take advantage of all that the Yes Men have learned–not only about our own ways of doing things, but those we've come in contact with over the decade-and-a-half that we've been doing this sort of thing.